Nationally, however, Intuit Payroll’s Small Business Indexes show that employment declined 0.05 percent, continuing a modest decline that began in May. Roughly 10,000 fewer jobs were created this month than in September.

From March 2010 to May 2012, small business employment grew by 150,000 jobs to 19.9 million, according to Intuit’s data. Since May, employment has fallen by 65,000 jobs. The Great Recession ended in June 2009.

Susan Woodward, an economist who worked with Intuit to create the indexes, said there are two main reasons for the lack of strong small business job growth during the recovery: Residential construction activity remains far below where it was in 2006 and “small business employment has been a declining share of private sector employment for at least 60 years.”

The Intuit Small Business Revenue Index fell by 0.3 percent in September. Construction saw the biggest decline (-0.8 percent), followed by retail, professional services, and hotel and restaurants — all declining 0.5 percent.

“The decline in small business revenue is consistent with the decline in small business employment over roughly the same period,” Woodward said. Since February, small business revenue has declined 2.5 percent.

This month, Intuit revealed that it has added four data sets — more than doubling the number of small business payroll customers to 170,000, monthly BLS private payroll, construction payroll and self-employment data — to the methodology for its Small Business Employment Index model. It also revised the index to align with the U.S. Bureau Labor Statistics’ quarterly Business Employment Dynamics data.

The Intuit Small Business Employment Index is based on aggregated data from 170,000 employers. Its Revenue Index is based on aggregated data from more than 100,000 small businesses that use QuickBooks Online.

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